November 26, 2023
Every Sunday morning during the NFL season, we lay out a rooting guide for non-Eagles games on the schedule. Since all three of the Eagles' biggest threats in the NFC played on Thanksgiving, we published that article, you know, on Thanksgiving. And so, let's maybe rank the Eagles' remaining games on their schedule from easiest to most difficult? Yeah? Cool.
1) Week 16: Giants: The Giants rank dead last in the NFL in DVOA. They're also dead last in offensive DVOA, 27th in defensive DVOA, and 27th in special teams DVOA. Ideally, you want to be good in all three phases, as shown in the graph below. The Giants are not:
| Offense | Defense | Special teams | |
| Ideally 😃 | Good | Good | Good |
| Giants ☹️ | Bad | Bad | Bad |
#Analysis.
But also, the Eagles currently hold a 10-game home winning streak over the Giants, and have won 25 of the last 31 matchups overall. The Giants last swept the Eagles in 2007. The Eagles have since swept the Giants eight times. 🧹🧹🧹🧹🧹🧹🧹🧹
Whether the Giants start Tyrod Taylor or Tommy DeVito, it shouldn't really matter.
2) Week 17: Cardinals: The Cardinals aren't much better than the Giants. Their offense ranks 27th in DVOA and Jonathan Gannon's trash defense ranks 31st in DVOA. Also, hard feelings exist between the Eagles and Gannon after Gannon communicated that he intended on remaining in Philadelphia to be their defensive coordinator in 2023, and then had impermissible contact with the Cardinals during the two weeks in between the NFC Championship Game and the Super Bowl. It's questionable whether Kyler Murray is an upgrade over Josh Dobbs.
3) Week 18: At Giants: That MetLife turf, man. Ideally, the Eagles can sit their starters for this game.
4) Week 15: At Seahawks: The Eagles have a night road game in Dallas Week 14, then they'll have to fly home in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, have four full days in Philly, before boarding a plane to the NFL city that is the furthest away from Philadelphia. That's not easy. This game is also at the tail end of the difficult part of the Eagles' schedule, and it's perhaps worth noting that the Seahawks have beaten the Eagles in each of their last seven matchups.
Still, with all those intangible difficulties, this Seahawks team is 1-3 last four games, and they've been outscored by a combined 50 points in those games. Maybe they're just not a good team?
5) Week 12: Bills: The Bills entered the 2023 season as legitimate Super Bowl contenders, and certainly they're a talented team that actually owns the fourth best point differential in the NFL (+104). However, they have found ways to lose five games this season, and they have suffered a lot of serious injuries to some of the best defenders, notably All-Pro CB Tre'Davious White, All-Pro LB Matt Milano, and starting DT DaQuon Jones.
6) Week 13: 49ers: When the Niners are humming they can dominate their opponents, and certainly they have a very good defense and outstanding skill position players on offense. However, they have an extremely troubling record when playing from behind.
— 49ers on NBCS (@NBCS49ers) October 23, 2022
If you watched the NFC Championship Game with even a shred of objectivity you could clearly see that the Eagles wrecked this team in the trenches on both sides of the ball. While the injury to Brock Purdy was unfortunate — and an effect of the Eagles' domination upfront — it probably didn't matter.
It's a new year, and both the Niners and Eagles have some new players, so we'll see what that all looks like soon enough, but the road game against the Cowboys is the more difficult matchup, in my opinion.
7) Week 14: At Cowboys: The Cowboys gave the Eagles all they could handle Week 9, but the Birds escaped with the win. Dak Prescott had a great game in that matchup, as he typically has during the Nick Sirianni era:
• Week 3, 2021: 21/26, 238 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INT, 143.3 rating
• Week 18*, 2021: 21/27, 295, 5 TDs, 0 INT, 151.8 rating
• Week 16, 2022: 27/35, 347, 3 TDs, 1 INT, 124.3 rating
• Week 9, 2023: 29/44, 374 yards, 3 TDs, 0 INT, 115.2 rating
*That Week 18 game in 2021 gets an asterisk since the Cowboys were going all out for no good reason against Eagles backups, but whatever.
The Cowboys have also blown out everyone they have played at home so far this season:
• Jets: 30-10
• Patriots: 38-3
• Rams: 43-20
• Giants: 49-17
• Commanders: 45-10
That's not exactly a murderer's row of opponents, and the Cowboys have taken joy in running up the score on them, but their dominance in those games is impressive nevertheless. I mean, they're outscoring teams at home 205-60. Their closest home game was a 30-10 win over the Jets. This is the Eagles' hardest remaining regular season matchup.
Follow Jimmy & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @JimmyKempski | thePhillyVoice
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice Sports
Add Jimmy's RSS feed to your feed reader
